


Sirens of Styx

by DemonzDust



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Blood and Gore, Canon Divergence, Dark Magic, Fix-It of Sorts, Horror, Hurt Theo Raeken, M/M, Mythology References, Pining, Rescue Missions, Sceo Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 07:04:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19848034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemonzDust/pseuds/DemonzDust
Summary: It's been months since Theo disappeared, and Scott is haunted by his desperate cries for help. Is it truly too late for Theo to be saved?





	Sirens of Styx

**Author's Note:**

> This was a work-in-progress sitting in my drafts from _ages_ ago. It’s set right after the end of 5B (or a few months after it). Back then we didn’t know exactly what “hell” would be like for Theo, so all of this is obviously my own interpretation and is canon-divergent after 5B. I decided to finish it for SceoWeek (Day 4 — Alternate Canon).
> 
> In any case, I hope you enjoy it!
> 
>   
> 

He couldn’t save her.

He’d been forced to watch the light leave her eyes as he held her and felt the last breath leave her lips. But her smile, her laugh, the ghost of his fingertips on his skin. He sees them, feels them every time he visits a place that she and him had been together.

She was his first love, and first loss. In a moment that could have ended him, she was there to save him. He’d lost her, but gained her back. She was a pleasant ghost, one full of love and laughter. Days of youth that would never leave him. A love that they would always share, in one world or the other.

The spirit of Allison would never leave him but the nightmares, few but painful, where he held her helplessly, stopped the night she’d protected him from The Beast. 

The ghost of Allison was gone, but in its stead a specter much darker haunted him. Another he couldn’t save. One that would not settle to be ephemeral wisps of love.

Theo Raeken, his desperate cries and pleas as he was dragged away haunted Scott.

Even after everything Theo had done, Scott still would have helped him if Kira hadn’t held him back. But she had held him, and he’d hesitated. Watched as Theo was devoured by his own sins. That should have been that. Scott should have let it go.

But he couldn’t.

Theo’s desperate screams pierced his psyche at night, rattled his bones. Theo saying his name, over and over again, desperately clawing, begging for help.

Why didn’t he just push Kira’s arm aside and help him?

But he knew the answer: because Theo was trying, yet again, to hurt his pack.

He didn’t kill Theo, and he owed him nothing.

So why did the scene play relentlessly on his eyelids every time he closed them?

Maybe it was the broken voice, or the wide eyes staring at him, pleading.

Scott couldn’t get it out of his head.

Days turned to weeks, and Scott felt his pack heal. Liam grew stronger and more confident, every day he came a step closer to bridling his rage. Stiles grew more secure, confident in teh knowledge that he would never have to hide from those that were close to him. 

Lydia becoming whole again. A fresh romance with a Beacon Hills deputy putt a long missed glimmer back in her eyes as her body healed. 

Mason was as bright and excited as if nothing had happened. Even Hayden and Corey seem happy, each with a pack and supportive boyfriend to help them adjust to supernatural life.

But within Scott there was an emptiness growing, and no one seemed to notice it. 

Scott was up at night, every night.

He’d began to use the time to his advantage, reading, studying, till he couldn’t any more. Then, as sleep crept in on him, he’d resort to other less productive activities.

Like staring at photos of Theo on Instagram and at strands of text messages they’d exchanged prior to his betrayal. They’re all full of lies, diversions, manipulations, and desperate plays to get Scott to confide in him. They should make him feel more resolved. Remind him of what Theo really was.

But they break his heart.

Theo, twisted, manipulative, and psychotic had also been broken, desperate, and lost. 

He’d had every card in the deck stacked against him. Scott imagined he must have been terribly young when the Doctor’s first found him. Small and defenseless. Left without so much as a candle to guide him in the overwhelming darkness of the supernatural world.

Scott knew that feeling. But he had been much older when it had happened. And he hadn’t been alone.

Was Theo still suffering? Would he ever see the light of another day?

Was the fate that he’d been drawn down into worse than death?

It was on a stormy night, with the wind was pressing up against his window and rattling the glass panels that Scott decided he couldn’t take it any longer. He’s woken, for what seemed like the thousandth time to the phantom sound of Theo screaming his name. 

He saw Deaton early the next morning, when neither the pack nor his mother would notice him missing.

“You do understand the risks you’ll be undertaking?” Deaton cautioned him. “Not just in retrieving him, but once you have him back?”

“Yeah,” Scott said heavily, staring at the cracks in the veterinarian's floor. “I know.”

“You’ve chosen not to tell the rest of the pack about this decision.” Deaton observed.

“It’s not their decision to make.” Scott said flatly. “It wasn’t them that he called for help. Even if he was just trying to manipulate me...Deaton I  _ can’t _ just leave him to suffer like that. No matter what he did. No one deserves that.”

“If you’re resolved in this then I won’t try to dissuade you.” Deaton said, seriously. “But I need to make sure you understand all of the risks. Not just of what Theo could do if he’s freed—”

“I’m not just letting him loose in the world.” Scott interrupted. “I can’t...do that in good conscience.” 

“I’m saying that Theo won’t be the only complication. The Skin Walkers are punishing him for a reason. And they won’t take kindly to someone trying to circumvent their justice.”

“I don’t care.” Scott said, stubbornly. “Their justice isn’t just.”

“Then we’ll perform the ritual tonight.” Deaton agreed. “I’ll gather the necessary components. You should try to get some rest. You’re going to need all of your strength for this, Scott.”

Brow furrowed and tight-jawed, Scott nodded.

* * *

It was just past midnight when Scott entered the sacred glade. Fog crept along the forest floor and shimmered translucent blue in the moonlight. He could feel the pulse of the animal within him, buzzing under his skin and simmering in his blood as he approached the Nematon.

“You have something of Theo’s?” Deaton asked.

Scott nodded, drawing a set of keys adorned with a green six-ball keychain from his pocket.

“Theo's keys?” Deaton questioned.

Scott nodded.

Deaton didn’t ask why Scott had kept this article of Theo’s, and instead silently went about drawing shapes around them in thin lines of Mountain Ash.

“Now some of your blood.” Deaton held out a bowl made of hemlock and glass.

“Why my blood?”

“You need a sympathetic link to him.” Deaton explained. “A connection.”

“And this will…” Scott trailed off slowly.

“It will have the other side effects we talked about.” Deaton confirmed.

Scott nodded and flicked his claws out. He scratched a small gash into his arm and a small trickle of blood stained the chord of the hoodie before the wound sealed back up.

Then Deaton added several things, a material that looked like sand, an herb that smelled like sage, half a dozen other minerals that Scott didn’t recognize. When he lit the contents of fire it smelled like charcoal and matches.

The wind picked up. Scott could hear voices hissing at him through the forest. Warning him.

“You can still call this off, Scott.” Deaton called to him, and he had to shout over the now billowing wind and rumbling sky above. 

But the same voice that had haunted his every night rung in his ears again.

_ Scott, please...please help me! _

“I’m ready.” Scott said, unwaveringly. “Do it.”

Deaton’s hands clapped together and a bolt of lightning split the ground in front of him. The earth cracked open, forming a giant gorge. Scott could feel the ominous waves of energy emanating from it as he stepped closer.

The wolf within him didn’t want to go down there. He could feel his instincts screaming at him to turn around. This was not somewhere he was meant to tread. But he’d made peace with that before stepping foot in the glade tonight, and he wasn’t about to turn back now.

He waited for Deaton to loop the long chain he’d brought between two sturdy beech trees and then wrap it securely around his wrist before he moved forward. Peering over the edge Scott could see a darkness blacker than oblivion. He set his jaw, gritted his teeth, and slid down it’s steep side into the darkness.

He’d barely gotten more than a few feet down before he lost control of the slide. His body tumbled down into the cavern uncontrollably, the chain rattling behind him as he went. Rocks and gravel scraped his knees, and chin. Sharp sticks and roots nicked his arms, cut into his legs, and slashed his sides. His nostrils were filled with the scent of sulfur, ash, and dried out rotting wood.

When he finally reached the bottom, he was sprawled out on a pile of stiff and unstable rotten-smelling objects. He could hear a muffled crying from somewhere farther within the cavern. It’s pitiful broken moan hardly even recognizable as human.

_ Theo. _

As Scott’s eyes adjusted, he groped around in the dark. His hands found a fist full of long hair. A crusty hand. What was left of a leg. He was tangled up in a pile of corpses in pitch black darkness.

He tried to scramble to his feet but the bodies rolled beneath him. He could feel his breath shuddering in his lungs as he coughed on the dirt and ashes. When he’d finally managed to roll away from the corpses and get onto his feet he could start to make out their features in the small slivers of moonlight that trickled down from above.

They were all different ages. Some children, some adults, many teens. Scott recognized Josh and Tracy among them.

He started when his eyes came across one with dark hair and rotting skin. A gash in his chest, a hole in his slightly crooked jaw. The face that started back at him each day in his bathroom mirror.

_ “See what he did to you?”  _ A chorus of voices, more snake than human hissed in his ears. “ _ See what he wanted you to become?” _

Scott closed his eyes, tried to push the image from his mind. To block out the hissing voices that Deaton had warned him about.

_ “You don’t want to save him. He deserves this.” _

Scott’s fingers curled into fists.

_ “He did this. He killed all of them. He killed YOU!” _

He wouldn’t give into them. No matter what they showed him. No matter what they felt Theo or anyone else deserved. No one deserved to be tortured. Especially not for eternity. Theo would never learn from this. More pain, more suffering, that was not what would change Theo. All that would be is more of the same. He would never be able to escape here on his own.

He didn’t care that Theo wasn’t his responsibility. Theo had called him for help. He hadn’t called Stiles. He hadn’t called Deucalion. He’d called  _ him _ . For help and for mercy.

He had called because he had no one else to turn to. He’d never had anyone to turn to. Not when he was eight and in the clutches of the Doctors. Not ever.

And if Scott couldn’t forgive Theo, then who would save him?

_ “Please...please…” _

The broken voice begged from deeper within, spurring Scott to move once again. He moved further into the dark cavern, using his hands to guide his way along the rocky wall.

He wasn’t going to fool himself into thinking Theo wasn’t dangerous. Or that he’d be grateful, or that he wouldn’t be a threat. He knew Theo would be all of those things.

He wouldn’t give Theo an opportunity to hurt him or his pack again.

But he would save him.

* * *

Darkness surrounded him. The rush of water filled his ears, broken only by the snapping of his bones, the tearing of his flesh, and the sound of his own cries. The sharp stones of the river cut into his back as her fingers dug inside him. Her nails scraped his organs, her palms wrapped around his ribs as she broke them open. She wouldn’t stop, no matter how much he begged her to.

Just as he’d remained still when she’d begged him for help.

She would continue her work, slowly taking him apart, organ by organ, bone by bone, piece of flesh by piece. His voice grew weaker, his blood spilled out. Freezing water rushed in to fill the gaps in his body where organs had been, yet it did nothing to numb the pain. He still felt every excruciating moment. 

All he wanted was for her to reach the end. For it to stop. For his body to become the nothing that his soul already was. But no matter how many times she ripped into him, she never seemed to reach the end.

There was always just enough more for her to keep digging.

“ _ Theo _ …”

He hated it when she called his name. But it was different this time. It didn’t sound like her.

“ _ Theo _ !”

Again it called, and this time it clearly wasn’t her.

* * *

There was almost no light in the place from which the voice was crying, and as Scott drew nearer he thought he could hear the sound of rippling water. The cavern wall took a sharp turn and he nearly fell over a sudden ledge. He grabbed the cave walls, dug his claws into earth and rock to steady himself.

There was a broken wooden bridge in front of him, or at least what seemed to be left of it’s rotted planks and railing. Beneath it there was a stream of black shallow water.

That was where Scott found him.

His skin was bone-white in the dark, his limbs tangled in the rubble from the bridge. His body half-obscured by the water. Above him, the specter of his sister methodically ripping him apart.

“Theo!”

* * *

“Sc—Scott?” he muttered, not sure if he could trust his ears, but still too terrified to open his eyes. Something was happening. Something was moving above him. A scuffle or a fight. There was hissing and roaring. 

Then he was being moved. He could feel warm hands on his skin. The sensation of heat was a strange and forgien feeling. A sensory experience that he’d all but forgotten. It made him shiver and he couldn’t help himself from leaning into it.

“I’ve got you.”

The ground seemed to disappear beneath him, and for a moment he felt like he was floating in the air. But, no, he realized as he heard the rhythmic beating of a heart next to his ear. He wasn’t floating. He was being carried.

“Scott?” he asked again, his eyes fluttering open in the darkness.

“Yeah.” Scott muttered through gritted teeth. “It’s me.”

He bit his lip. His fingers closed around the front of Scott’s shirts. 

_ Please. _ He thought, as he clung to the fabric so tightly his knuckles went numb.  _ Please don’t let this be some kind of trick... _

* * *

The house was still and quiet when Scott carried Theo over the threshold and into the living room. He was grateful that Melissa was still at work, and he could stave off her horror for a little while longer. He would tell her. Eventually.

Just like he would tell the rest of the pack. Eventually.

He paused only to lock the front door before carrying Theo up to his room. He’d prepared for how to deal with him, and there were a set of specially-wrought chains waiting for him by the radiator.

He wasn’t prepared for the way Theo, his eyes still screwed tightly shut, clung stubbornly to him as he tried to set him down on the floor boards. It was most likely involuntary. A knee-jerk reaction as he was still recovering from shock. But Theo’s desperate fingers slipping down his arms still sent shivers rippling down Scott’s spine.

It had been a while since someone had touched him like that. Months since he’d felt Kira’s fingers leave his skin for the last time. And there was so much need in Theo’s touch, it called to his blood like a siren’s song.

Things with Theo had  _ always _ been complicated. And as much as he would like to deny it, Scott knew as he gently pried himself from Theo’s grasp and fastened the leather-lined cuffs on his wrists, that it was about to get _ much _ worse.

Theo didn’t struggle as Scott removed his shoes and fastened a second set of manacles to his ankles, but Scott could feel his eyes on him now. Becoming more aware of his surroundings, following his every move.

Scott left enough slack on the chains for Theo to be able to lay down and sleep on the sleeping bag and pillow that he’d laid out for him, but not enough to stand. And certainly not enough to be able to reach the bed where  _ he’d _ be sleeping.

Once he was certain that Theo wouldn’t be going anywhere, Scott made his way to the bathroom to get a wet washcloth. Theo didn’t seem to be hurt — the wounds that he’d been subjected to in the underworld didn’t seem to have been inflicted on his actual body — but he was filthy. He didn’t seem capable of taking a shower by himself and Scott certainly wasn’t up for supervising him, so this would have to be enough for tonight. He’d sort the rest out in the morning.

Theo flinched when Scott moved to wipe the dirt from his brow, but soon relaxed under the warmth of the damp cloth. Scott avoided the searching look in his eyes as he cleaned the chimera’s face and neck. He tried to keep his jaw set and not show any of the conflicted feelings that swam through him as he worked. He didn’t want to give Theo any more leverage on him than he already had.

Scott was already dreading the morning when he dropped the dirty cloth into his hamper and scooped up his pajamas.

He was almost out of the bedroom and into the hallway when he heard Theo finally speak.

“Why?”

Scott paused, his hand on the door handle, then slowly turned to meet Theo’s questioning gaze.

“Because, I still think there’s good in you.” he answered, honestly.

Maybe he shouldn’t have given a truth like that to someone that might very well use it against him in the future. But, at least for the moment, it felt worth it to watch the confused emotions flickering in Theo’s eyes.

He watched the change, the surprise, the many more questions start to build up in Theo’s tired grey-blue irises. He drank in the sight for a long moment before finally turning away again. Fighting his hardest to remember the price he would have to pay for this, and to ignore the warmth creeping through his chest.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments and feedback is always welcome. ^_^ 
> 
> I debated writing a second chapter to this, but I think I’d prefer to do a follow-up/sequel fic to it instead. The sequel might end up being longer than this so this might actually be a “prologue” of sorts. No timeline on that as of yet, but I do have a solid idea for what I want to have happen. To tease it a bit the sequel will be called “Furies”
> 
>  **Other Sceo Fics by me:**  
> [The Road After](https://archiveofourown.org/series/997737)  
> [Memoriae Fractum](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17160500/chapters/40349246)  
> [What Should Have Been Ours](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9862829/chapters/22131167)  
> [The Call](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11857773/chapters/26771910)  
> [A Human Heart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18333482/chapters/43504403#workskin)  
> [21 Candles Shy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16680262/chapters/39115849)  
> [Adoption](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7802056%0A%20rel=)  
> ...and more on my [works](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemonzDust/works) page.  
> 


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